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en-usTechdirt. Stories filed under "games"https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/td-88x31.gifhttps://www.techdirt.com/Tue, 6 Dec 2016 23:37:32 PSTAmidst The Game Release Boom On Steam, It's Time For Valve To Weaponize Its Community For CurationTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161201/10030236166/amidst-game-release-boom-steam-time-valve-to-weaponize-community-curation.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161201/10030236166/amidst-game-release-boom-steam-time-valve-to-weaponize-community-curation.shtml
A review of stories here at Techdirt about Steam, the chief online retailer for digital games distribution, offers a mixed return of grades on its approach. Valve has a tricky wire upon which to balance as it seeks to protect the relationships it has with both its gaming customers and the publishers that sell their games on Steam. At times, Valve makes decisions that favor publishers, while at other times Valve's actions are quite good in terms of protecting its customers against those same publishers.

But this balancing act is going to become an issue in yet another way that revolves around the recent explosion in titles being released on the Steam platform. The excellent Steam Spy account on Twitter tweeted out the following graph, which should come as a shock to nobody with a Steam account.

Even for those of us who have noticed the uptick in games being released on Steam, I doubt most of us realized that nearly two-thirds of all the games currently on the platform were released within the past two years, or that over a third of them were released in 2016 alone. It would be silly to try to argue that such a deluge has no effect on the customer experience. An explosion in available titles adds to the workload involved for gamers searching for new titles to play, as they must weed through more titles in more genres, searching for the gems they want amongst an ever-growing number of rocks that they don't want.

And, in fact, Steam recognized this a ways back when it introduced its Steam Curators program, through which gamers can pare down game searches using curators they have come to trust for recommendations. However, the Curators program quickly managed to suffer from the same problem as the game titles deluge: there are thousands of curators, at times more than there are game titles on Steam. At some point, if Steam wants to remain useful to gamers as a platform on which to find new games, as opposed to simply buying them, it's going to have to do something to get out ahead of this.

That could take many forms, of course. The worst idea of the bunch would be for Valve/Steam itself to get involved in pimping some titles while pushing others to relative obscurity. This is a solution to the deluge problem offered in other arenas, notably in the way Apple restricts access to its iTunes platform and App Store, partially as a way to play quality police. It's not the optimal solution for two main reasons: it benefits existing entertainers more than newcomers, and it's partially the reason why Android and other music services are the preferred platform of users.

Better would be a solution that weaponized the Steam community itself, relying on reviews and feedback of both games and curators to lead gamers to "expert" curators, or something of the like. Alternatively, Steam could implement a matching system to match up gamers and curators by interest. This idea was laid out by James Beech at Gamasutra, who delightfully compared it to the matching system for dating sites.

If Valve really wants to make this system useful, they should implement a OKCupid style matching system. No really, make me fill out a one-time profile where I list my five favorite games, my five least favorite games, genres I love/hate, game elements I appreciate, (exploration, story, twitch gameplay), preferred game length, subject matter, etc. Have curators fill out a similar profile, and then generate match percentages, (just make sure it doesn't use the same match algorithm that the Discovery Queue uses; a feature theoretically far more useful than curators, if it weren't so consistently off the mark).

Anyway, all the answers would be private, with an option for curators to display theirs publically, so other users can see what those curators value. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’ll get me in the ballpark a lot quicker than manually sifting through thousands of curation pages with the same, “only great games within,” description.

Steam is going to build on its curator system at some point to battle this issue. The last thing anyone should want to see is Valve itself getting in the business of picking winners and losers, as it were. Force-feeding recommendations like that to gamers will make the problem worse, not better. Instead, they should trust their gaming customers and empower them, even more than they already have.

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]]>gamers-unite!https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20161201/10030236166Wed, 28 Sep 2016 23:01:28 PDTGame Developer Chooses To Connect With Pirates, Reaps Rewards As A ResultTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160927/09231735642/game-developer-chooses-to-connect-with-pirates-reaps-rewards-as-result.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160927/09231735642/game-developer-chooses-to-connect-with-pirates-reaps-rewards-as-result.shtml
While the industries that dominate digital products generally aren't great at recognizing the true nature of the threat of piracy to their businesses, it seems to me the video game industry is better at this game than most. Whereas the movie and music industries are dominated by a great deal of fists pounding tables, some game developers have for some time recognized that piracy might actually be an opportunity in wolf's clothing, if they would only try connecting with these potential customers and ingratitate themselves to this wider potential audience. Still, because this idea that should be easily portable to other industries is so rarely entertained by those other industries, it's worth pointing out the ongoing examples of how gaming companies combat piracy by being awesome and human.

One such recent example is the story of how PM Studios, makers of Playstation Vita game SUPERBEAT: XONiC, reacted to a discussion on Reddit's r/VitaPiracy/ thread detailing how to pirate the game. The game developer decided to jump into the comments themselves with the following:

Hello everybody!

We feel honoured that you enjoy our game SUPERBEAT XONiC so much, we would like to invite you to take this opportunity to purchase it on sale at the Playstation Store.

You can enjoy the original game and show support to the team for just $15.99 (60% off), no Playstation Plus required!

This, quite simply, is how it's done. Rather than flying into a rage, which would be somewhat understandable on a thread designed specifically to show how to play the game without paying for it, PM Studios decided to treat those on the thread with respect, even thanking them for trying out the game. This acknowledgement that some percentage of piracy is comprised of those wanting to see if they'll like a game before buying it, combined with simply ignoring those that pirate without any intention of ever buying the game, and wrapped up at the end with a link to where the game can be bought while on sale, was met with enthusiastic responses in the comments.

And not only that. PM Studios stayed in the thread and had a relatively lively but respectful debate about how it views piracy, the harm of piracy, and describing its status as a small team just looking to make great games. In other words, rather than simply screaming about piracy, it connected with its potential customers in a respectful way. In the end, several comments came to the defense of PM Studios.

[–]DidntEvenReddit 5 points 3 days ago*

For a small team making Xonic it really is a way to keep the developers on the payroll post-release and keep in mind this is a third party exclusive game on the fucking vita to begin with so the margins are already against them. I have no idea why you would equate the practices of AAA publishers to PMStudios or why you wouldn't want to support them. You're not sticking it to the big corporate man by fucking over a small studio like this

One imagines that this kind of thing builds up goodwill amongst potential buyers of PM Studio games. Some of the comments on the thread state as much. It won't do anything with the pure-pirate folks out there, but, then again, nothing will. Worrying about those that were never going to buy the game would have been wasted time and energy. Instead, the developer chose to try to win over those that might indeed want to support its efforts.

Here's hoping PM Games gets the positive reinforcement needed to confirm that this kind of thing is the right way to deal with piracy. And that other studios are paying attention, as well.

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]]>good-guyshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160927/09231735642Wed, 21 Sep 2016 14:31:22 PDTDigital Homicide Sues Steam Reviewers, Steam Drops It Like It's HotTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160919/06322735559/digital-homicide-sues-steam-reviewers-steam-drops-it-like-hot.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160919/06322735559/digital-homicide-sues-steam-reviewers-steam-drops-it-like-hot.shtml
In recent days, megalith digital games platform Steam found itself making headlines with a tweak to its game reviews system. At issue was Steam's prioritizing reviews from customers who bought a game on Steam over anyone else. Asked for an explanation for the move, Valve suggested that some game developers were attempting to game the reviews system by exchanging download codes for positive reviews. While this explanation omitted the prevalence of crowdsource funding of games, such as Kickstarter funding, Valve at least was putting on a public face of trying to treat its gaming customers well.

And now we have the second such story of Valve looking out for its gaming customers, as the platform has chosen to entirely drop a game developer known for its anti-consumer behavior off of the Steam store. You may recall that Digital Homicide is a game developer that has been featured on these pages before, having decided that the best way to deal with some mildly scathing reviews of its games was to sue the reviewer for ten million dollars, alleging emotional, reputational and financial distress. It seems that lawsuit wasn't a one-off, as Digital Homicide has now apparently filed suit against a whole bank of Steam users (at least 100), who reviewed Digital Homicide games, to the tune of $18 million, with a court recently granting a subpoena requesting that Steam turn over identification data for those users.

By Friday evening twitter user "lashman" discovered Valve had removed all of Digital Homicide's games from Steam. Games like Wyatt Derp, Temper Tantrum, and The Slaughtering Grounds (the first game Sterling reviewed)—are all gone along with their community pages, reviews, and associated downloads as if they'd never been there. You needn't worry if you've already bought the games in the past. They're still there, accessible through your account's library. But if you have a pressing desire to play Wyatt Derp in the coming days, you'll have to look somewhere else besides Steam.

"Valve has stopped doing business with Digital Homicide for being hostile to Steam customers," Valve VP of marketing Doug Lombardi told Motherboard in a brief email. He didn't say how Valve plans to handle the subpoena or if "being hostile" even directly refers to the lawsuits.

Valve went as far as to allow community groups and past purchases to remain up on Steam, but everything else is gone. No more games for sale. No more reviews of any kind. No promo videos or early access projects. It's gone.

Digital Homicide, as is its wont, is attempting to wrap itself in the blanket of victimhood, throwing all kinds of accusations at its targets and doing everything it can to pretend that this legal action doesn't revolve around negative reviews of its products.

On Saturday night, Digital Homicide responded with a lengthy post on the studio's homepage, suggesting it targeted Steam reviewers who harassed them.

"The lawsuit recently filed is solely in regards to individuals where no resolution was able to be obtained from Steam to provide a safe environment for us to conduct business," Digital Homicide said. "We submitted numerous reports and sent multiple emails in regards to individuals making personal attacks, harassment, and more on not only us but on other Steam customers who were actually interested in our products."

The post then goes on to show screenshots of posts on the Steam community boards illustrating these personal attacks. Two of the biggest examples, in which one user says he wants "to murder every single person responsible for this [game]" and another that tells Digital Homicide chief James Romine he should "kill himself for making me waste 0.14 for your ****** game," don't appear in the leaked documents from a few days ago.

They don't appear there because these lawsuits have nothing to do with the kind of over-the-top vitriol that any game developer ought to have fashioned a thick enough skin to wave off in this digital era. This is all about the reviews and nothing but. Were the court to suddenly find itself burdened with lawsuits against every game review that included nasty language, the system would collapse on itself. Everyone knows this, everyone deals with this. It may not be pleasant, but it isn't a reason for a lawsuit.

Yet Digital Homicide's suit claims harassment, alongside -- swear to god -- disorderly conduct, stalking, criminal impersonation, tortious interference, libel, unjust enrichment, restitution, negligence, damages, and conspiracy to commit civil rights violations. In its response to being dropped from Steam, the developer goes on to claim that Valve's siding with its customers is an indication that Steam is not a "safe environment", before suggesting that some form of legislation is needed.

It better come quick, along with a win against every John Doe it is suing in court, because the prospects for Digital Homicide making any money from selling its games to a public now informed of these actions are bleak indeed. Valve meanwhile, and its Steam platform along side it, have built up just a little more goodwill with that same public in siding with customers over an abusive game developer.

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]]>good guyshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160919/06322735559Mon, 27 Jun 2016 17:00:00 PDTDailyDirt: Badminton Robots FTWMichael Hohttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110812/17563315504/dailydirt-badminton-robots-ftw.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110812/17563315504/dailydirt-badminton-robots-ftw.shtmlair hockey robots that are nearly unbeatable, so it's really only a matter of time before robots learn how to play sports with a few more dimensions. Here are some badminton robots that are inching toward playing better than some of us.

Badminton robots are getting better slowly. This robot has binocular vision from two cameras and was built by students at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. However, it cheats a little bit by using two rackets....

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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]]>urls-we-dig-uphttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110812/17563315504Fri, 27 May 2016 18:18:00 PDTApple, Arbiters Of Art, Say Game About Surviving The Gaza Strip Isn't A Game, Even Though It IsTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160524/05304034530/apple-arbiters-art-say-game-about-surviving-gaza-strip-isnt-game-even-though-it-is.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160524/05304034530/apple-arbiters-art-say-game-about-surviving-gaza-strip-isnt-game-even-though-it-is.shtml
Search for stories about Apple's App Store in the Techdirt archives and you will quickly notice a theme. That theme is that Apple routinely appoints itself as the arbiter of artistic quality and morality when it comes to content within the app store, particularly gaming content, and that its application of these standards swings like some kind of absurd pendulum. Ban a game over here for telling a bible story that includes violence against children, but allow the actual bible to be sold as well. React to the South Carolina massacre by pulling down games about the Civil War because they include images of the Confederate flag. Reject a wargaming simulation, then approve it, and nobody knows how the company might decide to react tomorrow. You often hear that stability breeds a good ground for business, whereas Apple runs its App Store like some kind of experiment in chaos.

And in order to apply its standards in a way that apparently makes the folks at Apple feel all warm and fuzzy inside, it occasionally has to truly lower its explanations to absurd levels of outright lying. For instance, Apple recently disallowed a game about surviving on the Gaza Strip in its store, claiming it wasn't a game at all, but a news publication, even though the briefest review of the app reveals that it's obviously a game.

A game about the Palestine/Israel conflict, Liyla and The Shadows of War, has proved too political for Apple. The technology giant ordered the developer, Rasheed Abueideh, to remove Liyla from the games section of its iTunes app store, claiming it isn't a game and should sit in the news section.

The real question is, is Liyla and The Shadows of War a game? I played it last night, as Liyla is available from Google Play. It's a short platformer with a powerful message and stunning graphics.

The writer goes on from there to describe the plot, the inclusion of reactions to real life events, the graphical elements of the game, and the, well, gameplay. Because it's a game. You have to play to get either a win or lose scenario, there are choices to be made, puzzles to be solved, and stages to complete. It's a platformer, like Mario Bros..

So, why the ban and the lies to support it? Well, one can understand that the Middle East conflict and the ongoing crisis between the Palestinians and the Israelis is among the most touchy of subjects. For a company that wants to keep its brand and its App Store squeaky clean, at least in its own mind, one can imagine that this kind of thing is something Apple wouldn't want to touch. But, misguided as this already is, it becomes all the more so when it can't even bother to stay consistent on the matter. The App Store has available for purchase, for instance, Israeli Heroes, which appears to be an Angry Birds clone in which you lob missiles at bombs that reside under a crescent moon and oh my god, I think I'm about to have an embolism, because come on.

As always, in the midst of this nonsense, the game is available for Android devices, because that garden has no wall around it.

For once, the phrase 'relax, it's just a game' seems apt. Apple take note. Liyla and The Shadows of War is available for Android on Google Play – it's free, it's short and it's definitely a game worth playing.

We've said it before, but we'll say it again: it'd be best if Apple would get out of the art critique business. They're not very good at it.

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]]>art-thou-kidding?https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160524/05304034530Thu, 5 May 2016 23:38:41 PDTGame Developer Forced To Change Game's Name Because 'Wasteland' Is A Trademark, ApparentlyTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160504/06091034340/game-developer-forced-to-change-games-name-because-wasteland-is-trademark-apparently.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160504/06091034340/game-developer-forced-to-change-games-name-because-wasteland-is-trademark-apparently.shtml
Several years ago, we wrote about InXile, a game studio that rode Kickstarter success to producing Wasteland 2. The theme of the post was about how open and awesome InXile had been to its backers and other Kickstarter projects, bringing a gracious attitude to the former and promising to use some of the game's proceeds to pay it forward to the latter. These actions built a nice reputation for InXile, somewhat unique in gaming circles, by engaging with fans and customers alike, while also acknowledging the rest of the industry. In short, InXile was human and awesome.

Yet, since then, InXile has occasionally acted aggressively in enforcing the trademark it has on the term "Wasteland" for the gaming industry. First, in 2013, it forced a smalll gaming studio to change the name of a game it had originally called Wasteland Kings to Nuclear Throne after InXile contacted them. And, now, InXile has gone a step further and fired off a cease and desist letter to a single developer attempting to produce his own shooter game, which he had entitled Alien Wasteland.

Otherwise, an important thing you may have noticed is that the title of the game has changed from The Alien Wasteland to Action Alien. The reason behind this is simple ; a developer from inXile Entertainment, the company which released the RPG Wasteland 2 has contacted me claiming that titling my game "The Alien Wasteland" was an an infringement to their trademark "Wasteland".

Because both games have almost nothing in common and no case of confusion was ever reported for almost two years since my game was first announced, I have been calmly explaining through long emails why we should have no worries about this. But I finally ended up receiving a cease and desist letter from their lawyer asking to either stop using "wasteland" or to prepare facing legal actions against me. Since I don't have the time nor the strength to deal with legal actions from this developer and its lawyers, or even taking the risk of having my game to be took down from Steam, I decided to change the title to solve this issue.

The new name for the title will be Action Alien. Which...meh. And that sucks, because the two games don't share any similarities. And, while we shouldn't simply excuse InXile's actions as a matter of the necessities of trademark law -- more on that in a moment -- the majority of the blame, as usual, should rest with the USPTO's approval of a trademark that simply doesn't do the job of being a source-identifier.

Go into all the technicalities if you like, but nobody in gaming circles sees the word "wasteland", particularly when combined with other title words, and immediately identifies it with any particular studio. Hell, I'd wage money that if you actually took a survey and told gamers to respond with the first gaming-related thing they could think of when they heard the word "wasteland", the majority of respondants would say "Fallout". And with good reason: Fallout was a spiritual successor to the original Wasteland game. Giving this kind of control over a word like this to be wielded throughout a gaming industry bursting with post-apocalyptic settings tells us a great deal about how well the USPTO understands the gaming industry, which is to say it doesn't it all. If we're still going to go about pretending that trademark law has something to do with protecting customers, then the approval process for specific industries needs to be tightened up.

But the USPTO shouldn't be the only ones in the crosshairs, here. Too many gaming sites are entirely too willing to swallow pleas by trademark bullies about the requirements of trademark law, such as Kotaku.

“We always look for amicable win-win solutions in these cases,” said Beekers of inXile, “where we seek to protect our mark as any prudent business would do, while also helping the other party promote their game and provide a bigger reach than he otherwise would get, so that both parties benefit. In fact, that offer still stands now.”

It’s hard to tell if the inXile folks are being more aggressive than necessary or simply reacting to the absurd lengths US law demands of companies, if they want to keep control over their trademarks.

It's not as hard as Kotaku makes it sound. After all, if we're going to approach this not only from a legal standpoint, but also a moral judgement standpoint, then InXile as all kinds of options when it comes to how it polices its trademarks. It could, for instance, not send threat letters to other studios making games with titles that don't cause any customer confusion. It could at least attempt to work out some kind of cheap trademark licensing arrangement so that it wouldn't have to stand in the way of a simple gamemaker trying to get his product to the market. Or, hey, here's a thought: it could return to being the human and awesome company it pantomimed for its Kickstarter campaign and choose to not trademark an overly broad, fairly common term so often used in the gaming market. Were it to be the believer in the gaming industry it once claimed, that would seem to be the logical choice.

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]]>wastedhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160504/06091034340Tue, 26 Apr 2016 17:00:00 PDTDailyDirt: Thinking MachinesLeigh Beadonhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160426/14151434283/dailydirt-thinking-machines.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160426/14151434283/dailydirt-thinking-machines.shtml
It's a source of wonder and excitement for some, panic and concern for others, and a whole lot of cutting edge work for the people actually making it happen: artificial intelligence, the end-game for computing (and, as some would have you believe, humanity). But when you set aside the sci-fi predictions, doomsday warnings and hypothetical extremes, AI is a real thing happening all around us right now — and achieving some pretty impressive feats:

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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]]>urls-we-dug-uphttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160426/14151434283Thu, 21 Apr 2016 23:23:00 PDTEx-Game Maker Atari To Argue To The US PTO That Only It Can Make 'Haunted House' GamesTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160420/10073234222/ex-game-maker-atari-to-argue-to-us-pto-that-only-it-can-make-haunted-house-games.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160420/10073234222/ex-game-maker-atari-to-argue-to-us-pto-that-only-it-can-make-haunted-house-games.shtml
We noted several years ago that Atari, once the king of the video game industry, has since devolved into a zombie company built only for intellectual property trolling. Copyright, trademark, or patents: Atari will use all of them to try to milk the modern gaming industry for cash. In fact, in past public statements, Atari has made it clear that it has no interest in producing any new games, instead relying on its remaining staff to license its trademarks and port a few decades-old games over to the mobile market. Quite a fall for the once giant of the industry.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has set oral arguments for Atari’s claim against developer Hazy Dreams of Infinity over its use of “Haunted House” in the game Haunted House Tycoon. Atari and defendant Andrew Greenberg, Hazy Dreams founder, present oral arguments on Thursday. In 2011, Atari filed a “notice of opposition” against the Hazy Dreams in an effort to prevent the developer from launching the game, which is still in development. The classic-gaming publisher’s stance is that it owns that trademark in the gaming industry after releasing Haunted House in 1982 for the Atari 2600 console — although Atari did not file for that mark until 2010.

So Atari is going to bully a current game maker over a generic term it once used on a game it made over three decades ago, but didn't trademark until 2010. It's hard to think of an example that better shows how trademark law is abused today, deviating from its intended purpose and spirit. There's no customer confusion here to worry about. Nobody is going to mistake Atari's block graphics for the modern Haunted House Tycoon title. This is simply a bullying tactic, likely to generate licensing revenue. That's what Atari is now, after all.

Greenberg, of course, isn't pleased.

“Trying to claim no one else can use the words ‘Haunted’ and ‘House’ is especially ridiculous, considering games have been using the term ‘Haunted House” in titles ever since Magnavox released a game by that name for the Odyssey in 1972,” he said in a statement. “Atari has a horrible reputation for attacking independent game developers, including recently going after TxK developer Jeff Minter,” the Hazy Dreams of Infinity president said.

That's true, of course, but the folks running Atari these days don't care about that reputation. It isn't the public that is making them money, after all.

All of this comes as Atari has lost much of its original identity. The company, which has shifted from owner to owner over time, filed for bankruptcy in 2013. It emerged later that year under the ownership of venture capitalist Frederic Chesnais, who says that company is now 10 people primarily responsible for managing its past assets.

Ten people working for a company designed to troll actual makers of gaming content, potentially successfully blocking the release of a game because it carries a fairly generic phrase in its title? Yeah, we've gotten so far away from the original purpose of trademark at this point that it's basically unrecognizable.

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]]>huh?https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20160420/10073234222Wed, 16 Mar 2016 17:00:00 PDTDailyDirt: AlphaGo Plays Better Go Than Puny Humans...Michael Hohttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110223/08382213231/dailydirt-alphago-plays-better-go-than-puny-humans.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110223/08382213231/dailydirt-alphago-plays-better-go-than-puny-humans.shtmlmentioned AlphaGo back in January when Google announced that it had defeated European Go champion Fan Hui and was challenging Lee Sedol next. So now that the results are in, AlphaGo has shown the world that artificial intelligence can best the best of humanity at our most difficult games. We've seen this already with chess, and if you don't remember, people tried to make a variant of chess called Arimaa that humans could hold up as a game people could win over computers (ahem, that didn't work). We still have Calvinball, Diplomacy and certain forms of poker....

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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]]>urls-we-dig-uphttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110223/08382213231Fri, 29 Jan 2016 17:00:00 PSTDailyDirt: Winning Isn't EverythingMichael Hohttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110311/01452613448/dailydirt-winning-isnt-everything.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110311/01452613448/dailydirt-winning-isnt-everything.shtmlmentioned that progress towards an algorithm that could play the game of Go better than humans was on the horizon. It looks like our wetware shouldn't be too smug about being able to play Go now, but we can still have fun playing, right? And it'll still take a while before robots are any good at (non-contact) sports. Ping pong, FTW!

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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]]>urls we dig uphttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110311/01452613448Thu, 17 Dec 2015 17:00:00 PSTDailyDirt: A Minute To Learn, A Lifetime To... No, Go Is Much Harder To Learn, ActuallyMichael Hohttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110126/14494912843/dailydirt-minute-to-learn-lifetime-to-no-go-is-much-harder-to-learn-actually.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110126/14494912843/dailydirt-minute-to-learn-lifetime-to-no-go-is-much-harder-to-learn-actually.shtmlseveral games quite handily, even games like Poker and Jeopardy! that should give humans a bit of an edge. Still, Go hasn't been cracked... yet. Any bets on when humans won't be so smug about Go?

After you've finished checking out those links, take 10% off any $50+ order from our Daily Deals using the promo code DAILYDIRT.

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]]>urls-we-dig-uphttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110126/14494912843Fri, 4 Dec 2015 15:41:23 PSTPatent For Mini-Games Within Loading Screens Expires; Explosion In Better Game Loading Screens ForecastedTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151127/06515332914/patent-mini-games-within-loading-screens-expires-explosion-better-game-loading-screens-forecasted.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151127/06515332914/patent-mini-games-within-loading-screens-expires-explosion-better-game-loading-screens-forecasted.shtml
Whenever we discuss patents here, it's always useful to restate that the purpose of patent law generally is to promote creativity and innovation such that the public has greater access to novel and useful inventions. That the application of the patent system has been perverted from this original purpose ought to be obvious to everyone, which is why the mantra of patent protectionism by industry, often large industry, has always had the air of religiosity to me. Without patents, no creation would be made. Without patents, small inventors would be pilfered by monied interests. Without patents, we'd be without life-saving medicine. So goes the mantra of those prostrating themselves before restrictionism, repeated over and over again lest their imagined livelihood be taken away by the heathens who point out every counter-example.

Those counter-examples abound, of course, and we typically talk about them in terms of generic medicines that proliferate after a patent expires, or when life-changing technology is suddenly available to a wider public when access to it is relieved from restriction. But lesser examples can be useful to illustrate this as well. One such example is an absolutely asinine patent that had been granted long ago for mini-games being used within software loading screens. That patent recently expired and nobody is even pretending like this won't suddenly mean the proliferation of much less tedious loading screens.

For twenty years, Namco Bandai has held patent US 5718632 A, which has given them ownership of the idea of a loading screen minigame. On November 27 (this Friday), that patent expires. This is a big deal! For two decades, companies that wanted to keep players busy during load times (like Ridge Racer’s amazing Galaga) either had to pay Namco, find ways around it (as EA’s FIFA series has) or...give up and go back to writing a ton of boring tips and lore screens for people to read.

Is this really a big deal? No. Also, yes, absolutely. No because having a mini-game inside of another game's loading screen isn't going to save a life or ease the suffering of the masses. But yes, too, because it's an easily understood example of how broken the promise the patent system made all those years ago has become. Already there are plans to do a "game jam" for loading screens, where people will get together and spurt their creativity, now that what was once banned, is finally allowed. If the patent system worked on its original premise, this shouldn't be a thing. The patenting of mini-games in loading screens should have resulted in the use of that concept throughout gaming. It hasn't. If it had, a game jam built around building that very thing wouldn't be necessary.

Loading Screen Jam's "theme" is creating interactive loading screens (or anything that infringes on the abstract) and defiling the patent that held back game design for so many years! Create games/interactive material based on infringing the now-defunct patent in any way possible!

It's yet another example of the reality of the patent system working in nearly exact reverse to its stated purpose. Once the patent expires, the public benefits.

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]]>promote-thishttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20151127/06515332914Fri, 10 Jul 2015 15:58:04 PDTNotGTAV And The Strange Ways Copyright Screws With EveryoneTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150710/06085731609/notgtav-strange-ways-copyright-screws-with-everyone.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150710/06085731609/notgtav-strange-ways-copyright-screws-with-everyone.shtml
If you pay any attention to Valve's Steam platform, you've probably already at least heard about the hot-selling game NotGTAV. The game, just to be clear, is not Grand Theft Auto 5. It's actually not even close. It's a parody game, built to play more like a clone of Snake or something similar. But it is most certainly not GTA5. And nothing in the game is GTA5 either. Here's how the developers of the game explain themselves:

This game is a parody. It is definitely, positively and (hopefully) legally, not the game Grand Theft Auto Five. Sure, it’s called NotGTAV, but those letters stand for Great Traffic Adventure and the V is silent. Like the one in “lawsuit” (which, you’ll notice, is also invisible).

This short tour of the glories of the UK’s M4 corridor is easy to play, hard to master, addictive, very funny, and cheap. 100% of the profits from this game go to young people’s charity Peer Productions. Without Peer Productions the NotGames team would never have met. By buying this game you can help us pay something back.

Now, a parody game would be protected as fair use and going legal on a game that is built specifically to give money to charity would be a public relations nightmare. Not that any of that kept the game from being removed from Steam over a copyright claim, of course. The inevitable claim came and Steam took the game down from the marketplace. Everyone immediately thought that Rockstar games had been the one issuing the takedown, even though the fact that the GTA series essentially relies on parody to exist and survive the lawsuits idiotic celebrities have levied against the company. Indeed, when Steam informed the developers of the takedown, its notice named an employee of Rockstar as the complainant. And so the developers put their plan B into effect.

“We’re currently in the process of getting our game back on Steam, by re-branding to NotDMCAV,” Kendall said earlier today, shortly after NotGTAV’s removal from Steam. “The issue that Rockstar took was with the usage of ‘the Grand Theft Auto V acronym and title GTA’—apparently you can now own a series of letters, even it’s already a police crime in the first place. Our initial reaction was—and remains—that we’re protected under parody protection laws, and we’ve made it clear that we’re not accepting in any way, shape or form that we’ve infringed copyright, we’re just trying to be as compliant as possible right now.”

While I love some good snark as much as anyone, it turns out this good snark was wholly unneccessary. As the team worked to rebrand their hot-selling game, which involved a hell of a lot of work, they were also working with Steam to figure out just what the hell was going on. Turns out, Steam put the original title back in the marketplace having found that the complaint from "Rockstar" was actually "bullshit."

In what has quickly become the weirdest day of our lives, and one of the most hectic, we’ve just received news from Valve that the plaintiff of our DMCA is now being treated as a false complainant.

NotGTAV lives!!!!!!

We’re half-way through rebranding the game as NotDMCAV, and the store page we’ve designed gives us a huge giggle, so we’re leaving you some of our new artwork (you may be able to tell it was done in a bit of a hurry) for a couple of days but, as we’re not being sued, the name and game will be remaining the same.

So good on Rockstar for not filing this complaint and great for the developers, but all this shows is why the permission culture and takedown-first attitude make d-bags out of everyone else. The summary here, should you lose sight of it due to the NotGTAV folks' awesome attitudes, is that some nobody put in a copyright claim that took their work off the market, caused them to begin work rebranding, even though that work wasn't necessary, and then Steam put the game back up. In other words, the mere existence of the claim is all it took to keep the sales from rolling in, even if only temporarily. That's bullshit. It's a wonderful example of how copyright laws and the way that platforms like Steam choose to interact with those laws is a clamp on legitimate speech and art, not to mention tools for jerks to screw with content producers.

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]]>stealing-the-showhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20150710/06085731609Wed, 1 Jul 2015 17:00:00 PDTDailyDirt: Playing Super Mario By Rote... Is Fun?Michael Hohttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100806/10364710529/dailydirt-playing-super-mario-rote-is-fun.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100806/10364710529/dailydirt-playing-super-mario-rote-is-fun.shtmlFlappy Bird demonstrate this sweet spot for gameplay, and some classic games like Super Mario are still widely enjoyed even decades after their initial releases. Computers can play games like these, too, but they can't enjoy them like we do. Check out a few of these links on creative ways to continue playing Super Mario.

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

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]]>urls-we-dig-uphttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100806/10364710529Fri, 8 May 2015 18:11:36 PDTVideo Game Trend: The Decline Of The 'Game' And The Emergence Of The 'Living Game World'Timothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150507/05082730910/video-game-trend-decline-game-emergence-living-game-world.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150507/05082730910/video-game-trend-decline-game-emergence-living-game-world.shtml
Normally, reading a report on an earnings forecast by a video game company is no more interesting than it would be if the company made, say, toilet bowl brushes. But every so often, you can catch a glimpse of where a company thinks the gaming industry is going and how gaming might evolve next. One such report on Activision's earnings has some interesting tidbits to go along with the company's acknowledgement of the known trends in digital distribution.

The report starts off with Activision reporting that its overall sales strategy is focused on shifting as much effort to digital/internet sales as possible. This is no surprise of course, as the trend for gaming to shift away from shiny discs and towards downloads has been in place for a while now. Still, hearing Activision report that three-fourths of its revenue now comes from sales over the internet is jarring. But the really interesting stuff comes when Activision talks about how the internet has made it possible for a gaming company to go beyond making "games" and instead creating living, evolving game worlds for players to immerse themselves in.

Activision also said two of its newest games -- the space-age shooting game Destiny, and the digital card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft -- have accumulated more than 50 million registered users and are now responsible for more than $1 billion sales. Hearthstone, for tablets and smartphones, is offered for free to download, and makes its money by charging for upgrades and additional items over time. Destiny is also designed to get players spending money over the next ten years of its development by offering additional storylines and other items. Activision says Destiny's player base clocks around 3 hours of playtime a day.

The 11-year old World of Warcraft game is one of Activision's best known and longest-running active games. That has helped executives see the value in creating titles of all types that operate less as products burned onto physical discs and played over a short time to living titles, regularly expanded and updated over time. So far, it's paying off. Activision said a record 76 percent, or $538 million, of its total revenue came from sales over the Internet of full-game downloads and in-game adds-ons.

MMOs are not new. As the quote above notes, WoW is over a decade old. That said, gamemakers might have waited until recently to decide that evolving, online gaming worlds are going to be the new norm in gaming. The way Activision is talking about this sounds like the idea of making "games" is going to take a backseat to making evolving, always-running, decades-spanning game worlds in which the sales strategy will be an ongoing participation by gamers, rather than simply having them plunk down $40 at a retailer to take their shiny disk home and pop it into a console.

Activision isn't alone in this line of thinking.

This shift, though more dramatic with Activision, follows an industry trend with other large game makers, like Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive, which have both seen consistent boosts to sales over the Internet in recent quarters. These companies are beginning to see success in the games industry as less a matter of selling the most units and more a question of how to get gamers to play a single game for longer -- and spending real money in the virtual worlds as well.

Ten years ago, the method for measuring the play time in gaming was measured in hours. Ten hours was a short game, twenty was about average, and a forty-hour game was massive. Now game developers are looking to measure game time in years, not hours. It's a massive shift in business models.

This isn't to say that the more traditional "game" is immediately going away, of course. Activision is still going to pump out Call of Duty games, and is even reportedly looking to revive the Guitar Hero brand. But this sort of reminds me of how it felt at the start of the adventure game decline fifteen or so years back. They didn't die off immediately, or at all, really. Instead, the industry just slowly stopped making as many of them, bit by bit, until the point-and-click adventure game became the niche market it is today. Will old-fashioned "games" follow the same trajectory? The money trend seems to indicate it might.

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]]>a-brand-new-worldhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20150507/05082730910Thu, 19 Mar 2015 20:50:43 PDTNintendo Finally To Dip Its Toe In The Smartphone/Tablet Gaming MarketTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150317/06043430340/nintendo-finally-to-dip-its-toe-smartphonetablet-gaming-market.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150317/06043430340/nintendo-finally-to-dip-its-toe-smartphonetablet-gaming-market.shtml
Roughly every gamer who grew up in the glorious eighties and who also owns a smart phone has been completely flabbergasted that Nintendo, that icon of our youths, had so steadfastly resisted getting involved in mobile-device gaming unless the hardware had its logo slapped on the back. Add to that the company's drumbeat against emulators on phones and tablets that would allow gamers to play the amazing back-catalog of games-gone-by while simultaneously refusing to release any of those games for those devices themselves and at times it appears that Nintendo hates money. Recently, we even covered Nintendo's odd decision to go the opposite direction and port common smartphone and tablet games to Nintendo handheld hardware. This whole refusal to get with the times has come off as downright crazy.

Nintendo announced today that the company has entered into a "business and capital alliance" with Japanese online giant DeNA. As part of this alliance, the two companies will team up (a press release specifically mentions "joint development") to release "gaming applications for smart devices". These games will use Nintendo IP.

You may be thinking, "Duh, why wouldn't they do this?", but that's the question Nintendo fans have been asking for several years now. The fact is that the gaming giant has completely ignored the very existence of these mobile gaming platforms everyone has these days. Still, developing new games using Nintendo IP for phones and tablets is a nice move, but if it really takes off and it's successful? Perhaps that's when we'll finally see the back catalog of games open up officially.

And, while the wording is a bit vague and Nintendo insists it will continue being in the hardware business, check this Nintendo statement out.

Nintendo and DeNA expect to develop a new core system compatible with a variety of devices including PCs, smartphones and tablets as well as Nintendo's dedicated video game systems, and are to jointly develop a membership service utilizing this system, with a launch targeted for the fall of 2015. The companies expect to further enhance their customer relationships through the membership service.

Nintendo games possibly on the PC? It'd be a bold move, and a massive departure from the Nintendo of the past... and it would be smart as hell. Perhaps the gaming giant of my youth is finally embracing the present, if not the future.

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]]>about-timehttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20150317/06043430340Fri, 6 Feb 2015 14:40:12 PSTNintendo Plans For The Future By Pretending All Of Our Smart Phones Aren't Great Handheld Gaming DevicesTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150206/10035929937/nintendo-plans-future-pretending-all-our-smart-phones-arent-great-handheld-gaming-devices.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150206/10035929937/nintendo-plans-future-pretending-all-our-smart-phones-arent-great-handheld-gaming-devices.shtml
While Nintendo isn't necessarily known for forward-thinking when it comes to its business models, you don't necessarily expect the company to be on full-on denial mode. Coupled with its rather tragic history on treating its customers well, the gaming giant seems to make a habit out of restricting its own revenue in favor of backwards thinking. That mode of business planning appears to be progressing as Nintendo has announced that, rather than making old Nintendo games available legitimately on smart phone app stores, the company is going the other direction and looking to make smart phone games available on its 3DS mobile device.

In a recent interview with the Nikkei, Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed that Nintendo will be remaking more smartphone games on the Nintendo 3DS. Iwata added that the company will also be remaking old Nintendo games for the handheld. The games will be low-priced, going for a few hundred yen (a couple of bucks). That's right, instead of remaking old Nintendo games for smartphones, which anyone with a smartphone and a brain would love, Nintendo is releasing revamped and remade titles on the 3DS.

That sound you here is the collective gaming world's eyebrows raising in unison. While the 3DS product may certainly do things most smart phones cannot, that doesn't really come into play when it comes to Nintendo's back-catalog of games. Imagine, just for a moment, if Nintendo chose to go the opposite direction on this. Imagine if they suddenly made their NES, SNES, and N64 games available for purchase on smart phones, devices that are perfectly suited for running those older games. Piles of money doesn't even begin to describe what Nintendo would make from doing this.

Unfortunately, Nintendo is steeped in such a pervasive culture of wanton control that this strategy may not even have occurred to them. But they certainly must be aware that these games are already being played on smart phones, which really just drives home the notion that not making them legitimately available is simply pissing money away.

I get that Nintendo makes games for Nintendo hardware. I get it! I also get that some of these smartphone tie-ups could be big money-makers. But there are old games that people are already playing with emulators on smartphones anyway. So why not give these games a proper (and official) release?

Because, Nintendo. That's why.

Well okay then.

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]]>should-workhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20150206/10035929937Wed, 14 Jan 2015 17:00:00 PSTDailyDirt: Computers Like To Sit In Front Of Computers And Play Games All Day, TooMichael Hohttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/11123510129/dailydirt-computers-like-to-sit-front-computers-play-games-all-day-too.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/11123510129/dailydirt-computers-like-to-sit-front-computers-play-games-all-day-too.shtmlown games. Games like Connect Four and Checkers are already solved, and while we humans might like to point out that there are games like Othello, Go, Diplomacy and Calvinball that still favor human players, it may only be a matter of time before computers outwit us at those games, too. Check out a few more games that algorithms are learning to play better than human brains.

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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]]>urls-we-dig-uphttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100708/11123510129Mon, 22 Dec 2014 20:59:00 PSTGame Developer Deploys Interesting Sales Strategy By Telling Fans Not To Buy His Game As A Gift For OthersTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141217/06121329459/game-developer-deploys-interesting-sales-strategy-telling-fans-not-to-buy-his-game-as-gift-others.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141217/06121329459/game-developer-deploys-interesting-sales-strategy-telling-fans-not-to-buy-his-game-as-gift-others.shtmlbusiness models, we tend to see a wide variety of new and innovative attempts to monetize artistic talents. There can be many specific expressions when it comes to these new models, but we like to think that the best of them fall under the more general concept of connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy. That's what makes one game developer's strategy for success so completely original: he's connecting with his fans and telling them not to buy. And should you think I'm somehow exaggerating or misinterpreting what the creator of the game Frontiers actually said, here's some text from the post he put on the Steam community site, entitled: PSA: Do NOT buy this game as Christmas gift.

Hello, everyone - Lars here with a friendly developer PSA. A lot of folks have told me: I'm buying this game for my kid/friend/spouse for Christmas, they love exploration games! And I say the same thing every time: DON'T!*

Now, I already know what you're thinking: holy crap, those idiots on cable news who said that there's a war on Christmas were right! No, no, dear readers. Lars isn't some anti-Christmas Scrooge, he's just concerned that people will give the beta version of the game as a gift to unsuspecting loved ones who won't understand that it isn't complete and that this will somehow undo the universe.

The only people who will love it are players who seek it out for themselves, because it's NOT FINISHED. Your kid/friend/spouse will just be annoyed with you. I'm proud of this game, and with everyone's help I believe it's going to be great - but it's not great yet, so in the meantime get your kid/friend/spouse Dragon Age or The Binding of Isaac or something, trust me. The December release date unavoidably puts Christmas gift in people's minds. That's why I'm only releasing a trickle of press copies till after the new year. People are prone to impulse buy right now, and you don't want people impulse buying an Early Access game, especially not for others.

I mean, look, it sounds like Lars is doing everyone a favor here, but this is all equal parts insulting and business-dumb. I'd wager that most gamers that are diving into Steam's Early Access beta games probably have a firm understanding that these games are unfinished and quite possibly buggy. That was certainly the case when I got in early on Starbound, for instance. But that didn't stop me from gifting the game to my brother, because I'm a thinking human person who can determine for whom gifting the game would be appropriate. I certainly didn't need the game developer to tell me to simply not buy the game for anyone for Christmas.

Which brings us to a general maxim for anyone selling anything: blanket requests that your product not be bought probably aren't the best of ideas. Just a little Christmas pro-tip from me to you.

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]]>huh?https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20141217/06121329459Wed, 10 Dec 2014 21:01:00 PSTElite: Dangerous Deletes Promised Offline Mode Just Before Release, Non-Committal On Kickstarter/Beta RefundsTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141210/09281829380/elite-dangerous-deletes-promised-offline-mode-just-before-release-non-committal-kickstarterbeta-refunds.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141210/09281829380/elite-dangerous-deletes-promised-offline-mode-just-before-release-non-committal-kickstarterbeta-refunds.shtml
If the gaming industry should have learned anything at all from the SimCity and Diablo 3, it's that if your game isn't going to have an offline mode for play, being online had damned well better work from launch and it should be necessary for play, rather than as a form of stupid DRM easily circumvented by pissed off fans. Otherwise, fans are going to be really pissed off and your company will end up on the most hated list. Pissed off on levels of, say, angry customers who paid money for Playstation 3 features that were retroactively removed by the manufacturer.

But, wait. What if there was a way to marry an always online requirement that angers fans with the removal of features after significant money has been spent? Well, it turns out that such a scenario isn't a "what if." It's called Elite: Dangerous, and things are about to get really messy.

"Offline was initially not a planned feature when we went to Kickstarter," [creator David] Braben confessed. "We said we were making an online game. But then there were some people on forums and on the Kickstarter saying it'd be really great to have offline. So then we looked at it and thought, 'Actually, why can't we just run [what we have offline]?' We looked at the design and saw that it'd be quite empty. And I did say that. But I did say we'd be able to do a purely offline mode."

Braben is underselling the call for an offline mode here. He does, to his credit, admit that he absolutely promised a full offline mode for the game. Which makes sense, since there's, you know, an entire single player game included. But the company just announced, a week before the game goes out of beta and goes full release, that the offline mode is being killed off completely. And if the breaking of a promise by a game creator sounds like no big deal to you, you haven't heard how much money has been poured into this by Kickstarter backers and early-beta players. $2 million in funding came in through crowdfunding sources by parties that had been informed the game would have an offline mode and beta access cost gamers $75 a piece with the offline mode promise already in place. You have to imagine that there is going to be a significant number of people that might damned well want their money back with the last-second removal of a feature that had been promised at the time money exchanged hands.

And for those that do indeed want refunds? Meh, the developer will see if it feels like you deserve one.

Back when Braben and co first announced that offline mode wasn't gonna make the cut, they only offered refunds to people who hadn't spent a significant amount of time playing Elite's alpha or beta. They were worried, Braben told me, that people might take advantage of the system if they offered refunds to everybody—get their money back and then buy the final version of the game for a lower price. More community outcry, however, caused them to reconsider that stance, electing instead to offer refunds on a case-by-case basis. Players would take up their beef with Frontier, and if it checked out they'd get their money back.

I don't know what needs to check out beyond, "Hey, you promised me something I wanted when I gave you my money and now you're taking it away, so I would like my goddamned money back, please." After all, the excuse that some beta players have spent a "significant" amount of time in the game doesn't really matter if purchases were made under the conditions of promises that are now being refused to customers. If I buy a car that promises me four-wheel drive in the summer and only find out in the winter that the "4WD" button on the stick shift isn't a button at all, but a cleverly-drawn crayon etching of a button, Ford doesn't get to tell me they did nothing wrong because I drove the car all summer.

But how about we get a nice, tone-deaf quote from Braben to really drive home the face-palm moment?

What about in the future, though? Once Braben and co have a little more time and space (in multiple senses of the word), could they hack something together?

"We may still do something [offline]," Braben said. "We just don't want to promise it at this point."

Oh, yeah. Promising an offline mode when you're not sure you can deliver? That'd just be crazy-pants.

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]]>screwjobhttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20141210/09281829380Fri, 5 Dec 2014 12:30:21 PSTTarget And Kmart Pretending To Be Prudes In Australia Over A Vocal Anti-GTA5 MinorityTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141204/07091329327/target-kmart-pretending-to-be-prudes-australia-over-vocal-anti-gta5-minority.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141204/07091329327/target-kmart-pretending-to-be-prudes-australia-over-vocal-anti-gta5-minority.shtmlUpdate: We've just noticed that we originally named Walmart in this story when it should be Kmart. We've removed the instances of Walmart and deeply regret the error. Also, it should be noted that Kmart Australia and Target Australia are divisions of Wesfarmers Limited and not related to the US corporations with similar names.

As you may have heard if you follow gaming news, the next-gen console version of Grand Theft Auto 5 release in Australia hit a bit of snag this past week. Now, let's start this off by noting that it was only recently that the government of Australia finally agreed to treat its citizens like adults and allow the kind of video games we enjoy in the States to even be sold in the land down under. It came along with a strict ratings system, of course, but at least these games were finally available for purchase. It was a victory for speech and art.

It's a game that encourages players to murder women for entertainment. The incentive is to commit sexual violence against women, then abuse or kill them to proceed or get 'health' points.

As anyone who has played the game, as I have, can tell you, this is only half true. Or, actually, perhaps less than half, because all the same violence, sexual misanthropy, and cruelty applies at least to the men in the game as well, and I'm pretty sure I remember smacking around some wildlife during my foray into the game as well. The point of GTA5 isn't to demean women; it's to demean everyone and everything. The whole thing is a farce for violence and cruelty. That's its very point. But, to understand the plea of the petition, you have to understand who is issuing it.

We have firsthand experience of this kind of sexual violence. It haunts us, and we've been trying to rebuild our lives ever since. Just knowing that women are being portrayed as deserving to be sexually used by men and potentially murdered for sport and pleasure – to see this violence that we lived through turned into a form of entertainments is sickening and causes us great pain and harm.

Let's be clear about two things. The first is that any real life abuse of women, sexual or otherwise, is a horrific thing and should not be tolerated in any fashion anywhere. It's horrible and it breaks my heart knowing that survivors of such abuse must slog through life on a daily basis overcoming the abuse every step of the way. The second thing we must be absolutely clear on is that for anyone that values free speech, be it government or a corporate entity, the fact that these women issuing their petition are abuse survivors doesn't matter even a little bit. Free speech and artistic expression don't simply get to be limited just because some people may be emotionally hurt by it.

"We've been speaking to many customers over recent days about the game, and there is a significant level of concern about the game's content," [Target's GM of Corporate Affairs] Mr Cooper said. "We've also had customer feedback in support of us selling the game, and we respect their perspective on the issue. However, we feel the decision to stop selling GTA5 is in line with the majority view of our customers."

then they must also explain why this decision over a forever-controversial gaming franchise is only coming upon the re-release of the game, which originally came out a year ago, and how they can also take the following stance.

Mr Cooper said Target would continue to sell other R-rated DVDs and games.

"While these products often contain imagery that some customers find offensive, in the vast majority of cases, we believe they are appropriate products for us to sell to adult customers.

Because the first quote from Mr. Cooper obviates his company's need to take such a stance. All he and Target must do, to remain consistent, is constantly follow the demands of whichever group is shouting the loudest. Because, given that we're talking about one of the best-selling videogames in the history of the medium, that line about Target listening to the majority of consumers is a big bucket of bullshit. And, of course, Target and Kmart will happily sell the game elsewhere in the world, and make gobs of money off of it, while the petitioners updated their petition with "Thank you Target/Kmart" posts.

Fails all around, so... well done everyone.

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]]>windsockshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20141204/07091329327Wed, 6 Aug 2014 03:38:12 PDTTropico 5 Game Hits A Little Too Close To Home For Newly-Minted Thai Military JuntaTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140804/12591128101/tropico-5-game-hits-little-too-close-to-home-newly-minted-thai-military-junta.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140804/12591128101/tropico-5-game-hits-little-too-close-to-home-newly-minted-thai-military-junta.shtml
As you may or may not be aware, Thailand changes governments like we change the oil in our cars: every couple of months or three to five thousand miles, whichever comes first. As we previously covered, the latest in Thai military juntas are (surprise!) huge fans of censoring the internet while claiming they don't and taking down social media sites while claiming that they don't. The picture being drawn for the rest of the world is one of an unsteady military government whose primary unifying factor is that it really likes censoring stuff.

Thailand, which has been ruled by a military dictatorship for the past few months, has banned the video game Tropico 5 from appearing in stores, saying "some contents of the game are not appropriate for the current situation," according to publisher Kalypso Media. Tropico 5, of course, is a video game in which you can play as a military dictator, building and running your very own country in as sadistic a fashion as you'd like.

And, as we all know, subjugating millions of citizens as you laugh maniacally is for real life, not video games. The game, it would appear, hits a little too close to home for the Thai junta. After all, if citizens are allowed to play out what is essentially their government's own role, they may come to see how horrifically they're being treated and rebel. You don't want to remind those under your rule that they're under your rule, I guess.

The irony is not lost on Kalypso, the company that makes the Tropico series.

And here's Kalypso's Stefan Marcinek, also via press release: "Our distributor has been working hard to gain approval for the release, but it seems that the Board of Film and Video Censors deem some of the content too controversial for their consumers. This does sound like it could have come from one of El Presidente's own edicts from the game."

You have to think that a game mechanic was just born for Tropico 6, in which your dictatorial rule is furthered by banning video games.

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]]>their-version-of-the-sims?https://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20140804/12591128101Thu, 22 May 2014 17:00:00 PDTDailyDirt: Game OnLeigh Beadonhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140522/15085227339/dailydirt-game.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140522/15085227339/dailydirt-game.shtml
In the grand scheme of things, video games are still a fairly young medium of art and entertainment, with lots of room for advancement and a lot of aspects we don't fully understand. They are also insanely popular, and changing faster than anyone can fully keep track of. Here are a few recent tidbits from the vibrant world of gaming:

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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]]>urls-we-dig-uphttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20140522/15085227339Thu, 22 May 2014 13:58:00 PDTBlizzard Still Twisting And Distorting Copyright To Go After CheatersTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140522/08582227325/blizzard-still-all-about-twisting-copyright-to-go-after-cheaters.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140522/08582227325/blizzard-still-all-about-twisting-copyright-to-go-after-cheaters.shtml
The road to Hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. The lesson in that axiom is that one should always be wary of the potentially adverse consequences of actions intended to be good. Blizzard, unfortunately, appears to be something of a performance art piece on this concept. For many years now it has, under the auspices of protecting the larger portion of its customers' gaming experience, gone after hackers and cheaters in its games by twisting copyright law into a tortured pretzel. It began with Starcraft and then transitioned into World of Warcraft, both relying on a morose entwining of copyright law and terms of service. That combination essentially creates a cascade of faulty nonsense, starting with the concept that software is only licensed and not sold to customers, that ToS agreements are so binding that breaking them breaks the license, and finally that breaking the license negates the ability for fleeting copying that the software employs, creating a copyright infringement. If your head is spinning, you aren't alone.

Blizzard filed papers in a California court on May 19th alleging that an unidentified group of programmers infringed on the publisher's StarCraft II copyright with a series of cheats and in-game exploits collectively known as the "ValiantChaos MapHack." Designed to give StarCraft II players any number of competitive advantages when playing the game online, the MapHack was made available online through the ValiantChaos forum—provided that forum members paid $62.50 for access to its VIP section. The complaint Blizzard filed says that the company is taking action against the programmers in order to "protect the sanctity of the StarCraft II experience" against "hacks, mods or any other unauthorized third-party software" that undermines the competition central to the game's online multiplayer.

It would be quite easy for any Starcraft 2 player to cheer Blizzard on at this point. I don't play this particular game, but I've wished all manner of ill in the past on those that were obviously using cheats and hacks in online games in the past. Counter Strike, in particular, did more to teach me how much I hate cheaters than any other single experience in my entire life. That said, we still have the same problems as before.

Blizzard's filing again lays out its view that its software is licensed, rather than sold in the traditional meaning -- and that a violation of its ToS and EULA agreements nullifies that license. In addition, it claims both that the hacks created by the hackers (even if their copies were purchased legitimately) constituted a modified end-product, or illegal derivative work, and that this resulted in both direct and contributory infringement in the instance of every copy of the hack they provided, used or sold. It also, of course, argues that anti-circumvention clauses of the DMCA apply.

The problem with all of this is that it still relies on the twisted assumptions that Blizzard customers don't actually own what they bought and that ToS and EULA agreements are so binding that violation of them negates the license that the company insists was all that was purchased. As I mentioned, this may be done in a valiant effort to keep most of its customers as happy as possible, but that doesn't make it right. The wider implications of these rulings is horrifying. There simply will be unintended consequences in this that will prove to be far more harmful than any annoying game-hackers can create with their irritating products.

This may seem crappy, but the best course for everyone involved would be for Blizzard to simply jump back into the arms race with these cheaters and hackers and try its best to keep them off the company's servers. Going the legal nuclear option and twisting copyright into the mix may only amplify the amount of harm being done all around.

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]]>paved with good intentionshttps://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20140522/08582227325Thu, 24 Apr 2014 14:56:50 PDTBacklash Aftermath: King Suddenly Turns Amicable In Trademark DisputesTimothy Geignerhttps://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140423/07082227002/backlash-aftermath-king-suddenly-turns-amicable-trademark-disputes.shtml
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140423/07082227002/backlash-aftermath-king-suddenly-turns-amicable-trademark-disputes.shtml
When King, of Candy Crush fame, decided to lose its legal mind over supposed trademark violations by roughly everyone, the backlash on the internet was swift and decisive. Entire platforms developed out of the ether with the seemingly sole purpose of trolling the hell out of King. The most notable dispute, it seemed, was over a game called The Banner Saga, which King insisted represented a grave threat to their business model of allowing people to match up three or more digital representations of candied items. There too, the backlash was relatively severe.

According to both Stoic and Ransom, King has quietly and amicably settled the trademark disputes with both companies.

"Stoic is pleased to have come to an agreement with King regarding Stoic's The Banner Saga trademark, which enables both parties to protect their respective trademarks now and in the future," reads a brief statement on the Stoic website.

This result provides evidence once again that these David versus Goliath IP disputes can often be resolved with a little sunshine and public shaming. King acted like a bully and once their actions were spotlighted the public sprung into action to make their voices heard.

Perhaps the more important lesson is one served to King and other companies that might be tempted to behave similarly. It's one thing to protect your brand, but it's quite another to open up a legal salvo, with all of its necessary expenses, only to end up in exactly the same place you began. No names have been changed in response to the disputes. The only real result in all of this is now everyone thinks a little less of King and a bunch of lawyers made a little bit of money. Sort of makes the whole process seem silly, no?